The Quick Pint

03 Mar 2007

Braved a bit of cold last night and took the kids to Phoenix Park to see the amazing lunar eclipse. The sky was clear and the moon was high over Dublin, making it a perfect night and location for viewing. Astronomy Ireland set up telescopes, binoculars, provided play-by-play, answered questions from the crowd and gave impromptu tours of the entire night sky. I attempted a few pictures, but my little powershot was simply not up to the task. Best off looking at the flickr pool. When we arrived in Ireland, I sent a series of emails back to family updating them on our lives. here is an excerpt:

The people here continue to charm us. We ended up having a family dinner in Scott's pub one early evening night in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced 'done leary'). After dinner, we walked across the street to wait for the bus and then realized we didn't have any coins for the bus fare. I ran back across to the pub to get change and then quickly back -- I wasn't gone more than 30 seconds. As i arrived back, a very old man in a very old suit who had been slowly shuffling towards the bus stop passed us, stopped, mumbled something at me and smiled. I said, "I'm sorry?" and he repeated in his thick Irish accent, "That was a very quick pint!"

I can’t really do justice to the look of the old guy or his perfect comedic timing.

Next weekend is attempt two of our short trip to Venice, Italy. We were scheduled to go three weeks ago, but facty wrenched something in her back on the morning we were leaving. The back is healing, slowly, and the apartment we rented was available, so off we go. Should come back with a full memory card of pics.

Finally, it’s nice to see Iggy back in his home. No offense at all to pokerworks, but it was a bit like seeing a professional athelete spend a season with a different team at the end of his career. The play was the same, but the uniform just didn’t quite look right.